Just weeks before the start of the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup playoffs, Comcast and DirecTV have reached an agreement restoring Versus and its programming, including NHL games, to the satellite pay-service's lineup.

Terms of the deal, announced Monday, were not disclosed.

Versus will be restored to the same DirecTV programming packages that included it at the end of last August, when the Comcast-owned sports channel was dropped in a contract renewal dispute over per-subscriber fees DirecTV would be required to pay to carry it.

Some regular-season NHL games and many playoff games are available only on Versus, which would have proved a hardship for hockey fans with DirecTV.